Approaches to Teaching Chaucer's Canterbury TalesEditor(s): Joseph Gibaldi
Pages: xvi & 175 pp.
Published: 1980
ISBN: 9780873524759
"A work of diversity of talent, training, experience, and perspective which is bound together by an obvious common commitment to teach the plenty that exists in Chaucer.... This book should, then, be praised as a significant contribution to the teaching of Chaucer."

College Literature

The casebound edition of this title is out of print.

The inaugural volume in the MLA's popular Approaches to Teaching World Literature series comprises bibliographic and instructional essays devoted to the first great English poet. The consultant editor, Florence H. Ridley, notes in her introduction, "As teachers we are faced with the challenge of enabling our students to see how Chaucer's poetry passes the ultimate test of the world's greatest literature." The pieces collected here address the special difficulties of introducing students to Chaucer's language and his political, social, and intellectual milieu.

Like other books in the Approaches series, this volume is divided into two parts. Part 1, "Materials," surveys editions, anthologies, recommended student readings, recordings, films, and other instructional aids. In part 2, "Approaches," fifteen teachers discuss how to present Chaucer in settings ranging from survey courses for nonmajors to seminars devoted to the author. Readers will find within a variety of useful information, including discussions of Chaucer's cultural context, the representation of women in medieval literature, and the theme of pilgrimage in fourteenth-century poetry.

Table of Contents

Approaches to Teaching Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

Introduction: The Challenge of Teaching The Canterbury TalesFlorence H. Ridley

PART 1: MATERIALSJoseph Gibaldi

Editions

Introduction

Works of Chaucer

The Canterbury Tales

Dual-Language Editions and Translations

Anthologies

Required and Recommended Student Readings

Aids to Teaching

The Instructor's Library

Introduction

Reference Works

Background Studies

Critical and Linguistic Studies

PART 2: APPROACHES

Introduction

The Student as Reader of Chaucer

Scala ChauceriensisJohn H. Fisher

The Chaucer Course: General Overviews

And Glady Teche the Tales of CaunterburyThomas J. Garbáty

The Idea of a Chaucer CourseDonald R. Howard

Diverse Folk Diversely They TeachEmerson Brown, Jr.

On Making Students Relevant to ChaucerMary J. Carruthers

The Chaucer Course: Specific Approaches

A Rhetorical and Structural EmphasisRobert M. Jordan

The Boethian Unity of the TalesWilliam Provost

The Cultural ContextTerrie Curran

An Approach to Teaching Chaucer's LanguageThomas W. Ross

Survey Courses for Nonmajors

Teaching Chaucer in a Historical Survey of British LiteratureMichael West

A New Route Down Pilgrims' Way: Teaching Chaucer to NonmajorsStephen R. Portch